Cora Lewis, Author at The Rapid City Post

FILE - A woman walks by a sign "Buy now pay later" at a store in Bangalore, India, on Sept. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)

Buy Now, Pay Later loans will soon affect some credit scores

June 26, 2025

Hundreds of millions of ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ loans will soon affect credit scores for millions of Americans. Scoring company FICO said Monday that it is rolling out a new scoring model that factors the short-term loans into their consumer scores. Previously, the loans had been excluded, though Buy Now, Pay Later company Affirm began voluntarily reporting new pay-in-four loans to Experian, a separate credit bureau, in April. Typically, with Buy Now, Pay Later loans, consumers pay for a given purchase in four installments over six weeks, in a model more similar to layaway than to a credit card.

FILE - People demonstrate in Lafayette Park across from the White House in Washington, June 30, 2023, after a sharply divided Supreme Court has ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in trying to cancel or reduce student loan debts for millions of Americans. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Credit scores decline for millions as US student loan collections restart

June 16, 2025

Millions of Americans are seeing their credit scores suffer now that the U.S. government has resumed referring missed student loan payments for debt collection. After 90 days of non-payment, student loan servicers report delinquent accounts to major credit bureaus, which use the information to recalculate the borrower’s score. Falling behind on loan payments therefore can affect an individual’s credit rating as severely as filing for personal bankruptcy. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 1 in 4 people with student loan accounts were more than 90 days behind on payments at the end of March. It said borrowers ages 40 and older were most likely to be delinquent on their loans.

FILE - People shop for shoes in a Nike store on Nov. 25, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)

Why are more shoppers struggling to repay ‘buy now, pay later’ loans?

May 21, 2025

Short-term lender Klarna says more customers are having trouble repaying their “buy now, pay later” loans. The disclosure this week corresponded with reports by lending platforms Bankrate and LendingTree, which cited an increasing share of all “buy now, pay later” users saying they’re falling behind on payments. Some analysts see the late or missed installments as a sign of faltering financial health among a segment of the U.S. population as the nation’s total consumer debt rises to a record $18.2 trillion. Buy now, pay later plans generally split payments for purchases into four or fewer installments. Providers typically market the loans as accruing zero interest and promote them as a safer alternative to traditional credit cards.

Cora Lewis.

Buy Now, Pay Later loans will soon affect some credit scores

Credit scores decline for millions as US student loan collections restart

Why are more shoppers struggling to repay ‘buy now, pay later’ loans?

Finance.

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